The human person finds his perfection “in seeking and loving what is true and good.
Ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapon than the witness of suffering.
If in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be ‘devout’ and to perform my ‘religious duties’, then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely ‘proper’, but loveless.
God is our Father and loves us, even when his silence remains incomprehensible.
God’s love for his people is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.
The ‘commandment’ of love is only possible because it is more than a requirement. Love can be ‘commanded’ because it has first been given.
The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a “new creation”, capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him.
So Jesus in the throes of his Passion is an image of hope: God is on the side of those who suffer.
It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.
The human spirit is so utterly one with the body that the term “form” can be used of the body and retain its proper meaning. Conversely, the form of the body is spirit, and this is what makes the human being a person.
We throw ourselves down, as Jesus did, before the mystery of God’s power present to us, knowing that the Cross is the true burning bush, the place of the flame of God’s love, which burns but does not destroy.
Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.
Morality is not man’s prison but rather the divine element in him.
The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness
The love, loyalty, and dedication of Mary and Joseph are an example for all Christian couples, who are neither the friends nor masters of their children’s lives, but the guardians of this incomparable gift from God.
We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.
Creation exists to be a place for the covenant that God wants to make with man. The goal of creation is the covenant, the love story of God and man.
God’s dialogue with us becomes truly human, since God conducts his part as man.
After the evil spirit of a narrow Scholastic orthodoxy has been driven out, in the end seven much more wicked spirits return in its place.
The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. But at the same time, they are a gesture of opening up, tearing the world open so that heaven my enter in, may become “present” within it.
The risen Lord is the new Temple, the real meeting place between God and man.
The principle of tolerance and respect for freedom promoted by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council are today being manipulated and erroneously taken too far.
We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.
A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time.
There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.
Artificial intelligence, in fact, is obviously an intelligence transmitted by conscious subjects, an intelligence placed in equipment. It has a clear origin, in fact, in the intelligence of the human creators of such equipment.
An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.
There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere.
God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the Earth.
The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath.
God does not change; he is Love, ever and always. In himself, he is communion, unity in Trinity, and all his words and works are directed to communion.
I would designate as science fiction in the best sense: they are visions and anticipations by which we seek to attain a true knowledge, but, in fact, they are only imaginations whereby we seek to draw near to the reality.
Loving the church also means having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before oneself the good of the church and not one’s own.
The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us.
The Gospel purifies and renews: it bears fruit wherever the community of believers hears and welcomes the grace of God in truth and lives in charity. This is my faith this is my joy.
If we may not remain silent about evil in the Church, then neither should we keep silent about the great shining path of goodness and purity which the Christian faith has traced out over the course of the centuries.
For me, it’s a great joy to be together with priests: in the end, the bishop of Rome is the bishop and brother of all priests. His mandate is to confirm the brothers in the faith.
God guides his church, maintains her always, and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the way of the church and the world.
We must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.
Above all, we must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.
I realized that everything I had to do I could not do on my own, and so I was almost obliged to put myself in God’s hands, to trust in Jesus who – while I wrote my book on him – I felt bound to by an old and more profound friendship.
It is very important for a priest, in the parish itself, to see how people trust in him and to experience, in addition to their trust, also their generosity in pardoning his weaknesses.
All the great works of art, the cathedrals – the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches – are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.
Today, I, too, wish to reaffirm that I intend to continue on the path toward improved relations and friendship with the Jewish people, following the decisive lead given by John Paul II.
How much we need, in the church and in society, witnesses of the beauty of holiness, witnesses of the splendour of truth, witnesses of the joy and freedom born of a living relationship with Christ!